


I'll Show You A Sunset (If You Stay With Me Till Dawn)

by auroreanrave



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Drabble, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Healing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 02:35:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17593001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: Matt and Jessica move in together on the one-year anniversary of the Washington Lodge Mountain Disaster.





	I'll Show You A Sunset (If You Stay With Me Till Dawn)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is off the back of a couple of my favourite YouTubers replaying the game (which I was briefly obsessed with a couple of years back) and my love for two of the most under-utilised characters. This deals with acknowledgment of trauma and survivorship and healing and was very cosy in the cold to write. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title comes from Judie Tzuke's 'Stay With Me 'Till Dawn'.

Matt and Jessica move in together on the one-year anniversary of the Washington Lodge Mountain Disaster.

Their apartment is spacious and comfortable, a combination of Jessica's modeling spots and Matt's football scholarship and a substantial payoff from the authorities and the Washingtons in their bank balances. They split the rent, mark out their bedrooms, and spend their first night in the apartment watching sitcom reruns with Wolfie at their feet eating leftover pizza crusts. New York is theirs for the taking.

Jessica still sees a therapist three times a week and uses heavy duty concealer for bikini shoots to hide the unseemly red scars that zigzag across her arms and stomach. She's primed for anything that comes her way, save for any shoot that involves the woods which she categorically refuses. Matt knows she loves the city for this reason, for the distinct lines drawn from the woods, for the safety that can come from the bubble of a big city.

Matt has his scholarship, works hard at school. and fights off panic attacks about monsters in the dark, about fire and darkness and Emily screaming as she falls, about howls in the dark. He brushes off comments about his battle wounds from his teammates in the locker room, turns them into jokes about a drunken car crash, a crazy ex, a mountain lion.

They see the others from time to time. Chris and Ashley are in Los Angeles, both at UCLA and happily in love as aspiring writers for the time being. Sam is busy working with conservation groups in Europe, sending selfies from Belarus and Iceland and Moldova, while Mike and Emily hold court in Texas, back together and happier than ever according to their social media feeds.

Wolfie takes to city life well, enjoys napping in the warm patches of sunlight that filter through their windows and plunging into December snowpiles with glee. Matt sometimes Skypes with Mike just so he can see Wolfie who huffs and rolls and shows his belly to Mike's delight.

 

* * *

 

 

The two year anniversary rolls around. Jessica makes it into Vogue as a minor feature and she and Matt celebrate with awful tequila and pizza and spend the rest of the night singing karaoke from videos on the internet. Sam has the great idea after giving a speech at the WHO on the effects of forest bathing on mental health (the irony isn't lost on any one of them) of setting up a group chat. It's awkward and weird and Emily and Jessica both leave several times after all-caps yelling matches and angry voice clips, but they work through it all.

Chris and Ashley marry in the spring, in a tiny courthouse ceremony, and don't invite any of them to it.

"We just," says Ashley, looking wide-eyed and apologetic, "needed this to be for us. You know?"

Matt, knowing the combustible tempers and bone-deep resentments that still run within the group, tells her it's fine, that they understand. He sends them a dinner service from Williams-Sonoma as a wedding gift for the new house and signs it from both he and Jess.

 

* * *

 

 

It becomes three years. Matt invites Jess to Christmas with his family when hers implodes and she accepts, quickly integrating herself in with his mom and sisters. Matt watches her with flour in her hair, laughing at his mom's corny Christmas jokes, devouring snacks, and realises that he's fallen in love with the girl she is now, a million miles from the girl he knew a lifetime ago.

They head back into the city for New Year's and forego partying in Times Square as snow settles in by banking the proverbial fires and queuing up episodes of Frasier and Twilight Zone and The Joy of Painting. Wolfie chews at a bone and ignores his little party hat with the dignity one would expect from a wendigo-slaying wolfdog.

Then it's the countdown, the sound echoing throughout the city as Matt and Jess step onto the cold, wet balcony of the apartment to watch the city welcome in the New Year.

"Happy New Year!" Jessica screams into his ear as she throws her arms around him.

"Happy New Year," Matt says, and then it's fireworks and Jess in his arms, and then he feels pulled towards her and he kisses her.

Because at the end of the day, they seem to fit. They were the disparate parts left when Mike and Emily joined then divided then reunited following the night on the mountain, and yet somehow they found each other at the bottom of cursed mines, protected each other and saved one another. They even fit together here in Manhattan, the shy quarterback and the outspoken model, both more than what they seem, both broken and reformed by the horrors they've endured.

She's his best friend. The person who makes him soup when he's sick and tequila shots on his birthday and cheers him on at his games. His person.

Jess kisses Matt back, her arms warm around his neck. "Thank God," Jess says, "I thought it was just me."

 

* * *

 

 

"You're my favourite person," Matt says as they curl up in Matt's bed, comforters tucked around their chins like children, limbs entangled. The snow flurries at the window. Wolfie snores tucked in blankets at the bottom of Matt's bed.

"Cool. You're mine too." Jessica beams, her hair pale gold in the moonlight. She presses a kiss to Matt's jaw, over a faded scar.

Matt curls up next to Jessica, soft and warm and tumbling into sleep, and for the first time in a long while, she feels lightness in her stomach and falls away to a deep, sweet sleep.


End file.
